


Kings

by hongmunmu



Series: Life, Death, Time, Earth [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Implied Violence, M/M, again....vague implications of nsfw but nothing big, also a tiny bit of violence/implied violence, madaoro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:12:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1380379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In your head and in my hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kings

“Have you no pride?” Madara murmurs in the pathetic serpent’s ear. Orochimaru just smiles a venomous smile.

“Have you no cunning?” he replies. And yet despite the retort he continues to jerk and whine against every of Madara’s slightest movements, supposedly powerless against the older man’s carte blanche. Though Madara knows this is a pretense. He can see Orochimaru’s true character; it forces its way through, in bursts and cuts, slivers between the moans and blushes.

And though presently the snake is docile, a blunt, passive thing - Madara knows better. The white skin looks delectable yet the crow-haired man knows that a dark poison flows in the capillaries beneath, and if he were to bite down he would come away dead. A bird of prey can sense such things but even the most fearsome raptor will fall to the right dose of lethal liquid.

Darker shadows writhe beneath the swathes of paper-white skin.

Inspired, Madara goes for a different approach. To mark.

He drags his nails across the younger man’s skin; loose and untamed at first, but with each motion, each flick of a wrist, his movements become controlled; he is a sculptor, the artful voyeur, constructing his masterpiece. His nails scratch perfectly symmetrical patterns into Orochimaru’s ghostly skin.

The Uchiha is an artist, a perfectionist, rushing nothing, shirking nothing. Orochimaru is the ideal canvas, thin-boned and angular, ribs jutting out oddly. A sunken face, arteries and veins weaving perfect patterns, brilliantly coloured lines standing out so beautifully against the thin layers of breakable skin cells above. How Madara would love to see the full extent of the colours lying dormant beneath the shroud.

But he is an artist, a perfectionist. Lack of control is sin.

He knows the pair of serpentine amber slits are trained on him, watching his every twitch; and yet he refuses to look into the other’s eyes, keeping his bored façade. I am not interested in you; I am interested in your cornflower blue veins. Appearing idle, face solemn – almost wistful – he turns his attention on the icy tracks that bulged out of a white wrist as if trying to escape. Scratching again, his fingernails are scalpels. Carving intricately detailed designs around the forget-me-not lines. Madara is power. Orochimaru revels in it.

And once satisfied, Madara moves up once more, tracing sturdy fingertips over the now lightly scarring pinkish lines that adorn the serpent’s hipbones, waist, ribs, wrists. Admiring his handiwork. Though it will fade, but that was in the nature of art. Orochimaru would always leave beauty behind him; snakes will always shed their skin no matter how fantastic the scales. And petals will fall from lilies. Leaves from the branches. Bark from the trees  -

He abandons his previous endeavours, at last allowing Orochimaru the privilege of eye contact. Almost in response he blinks, slowly, lazily, and for a minute Madara cannot register whether it is complimentary or insulting. He opts with the latter. To look away from Uchiha Madara while he is in your presence is insubordination. Disrespect. Madara’s slender hands form fists in the other man’s hair and wrench and slam the man’s head back down.

Yet the Sannin barely registers the gesture; the idle smirk on his face remains as if carved in stone. Madara’s eyes are narrowed in offense, dark bags beneath becoming even more prominent, yet still Orochimaru doesn’t react. He isn’t even looking in the elder’s direction now; his head has tilted back from the slam, eyes rolling towards the ceiling, smirk ever-present. He says nothing.

Irate, Madara tries a different approach; hands grip around the serpent’s neck and collar, pulling him forward. He does not support the other man’s head but he doesn’t need to; recognising the prompt, Orochimaru lifts his skull, heavy with the weight of tresses, and pulls into Madara’s hold, faces dangerously close. The smirk remained.

“You are barely more than a child in my eyes,” the crow tells him harshly, voice little more than a whisper.  Orochimaru’s eyes glint.

“Do you always treat children so roughly?” he questions, rhetorical – yes, everything means more with Orochimaru, everything is a challenge, single words can be insinuations to last for years. It’s tiring speaking to him; always a beration, every saccharine word the man produced had a double meaning. Madara preferred artistic words, not hidden ones.

Victorious, Orochimaru’s golden eyes narrow further; bottom lids pinch upwards in apparent mirth. A skeletal white hand lifts to run through Madara’s hair, and moves in to close the gap between their lips, lips which spat insults and challenges as freely as they would impart kisses. Orochimaru’s eyes are closed, amber flames snuffed out behind the dark purple-stained lids. With closed eyes, Madara reasoned, Orochimaru looked far more like a woman than one would initially have thought. The powder-white skin, elaborate purple shadows stretching out around the long black lashes. He was temporarily disgusted by the thought, but comforted himself in the knowledge that Orochimaru was indeed a man.

Madara would not let himself be seen with a woman.

Though incidentally, he felt far more reassured of his own masculinity around Orochimaru than around Hashirama.

In turn, the Uchiha brought up his own hand, pale, although not as far as that of the serpent’s; calloused, war-hardened. It ran through his own dark hair and then the other’s, heavy, tamed, feminine. It pooled around them, and Madara was tempted to liken it to liquid though it did not have the same sheen. Orochimaru’s hair was like an oil spill, suffocating, pure dark, thin glimpses of circulating colours dancing among strands like tricks of the light. Madara’s was not; rooted to the earth, it was more akin to leaves on branches, thick yet layered, untamed; it kept its shape through tangles. Yet like Orochimaru’s it did not shine. Perhaps they were alike in that sense. And yet Madara had not known previously that there could be so many different shades of black.

Black was not a colour Madara dwelled upon.

Yet green was -

The digits he had left lingering in Orochimaru’s swathes sifted through and came to finger one of the elegant viridian tomoes that dangled from the snake’s ears. He hated the things. Madara could not stand that colour. Sea-green. Leaves and water. The colour of life.

His eyes were closed now as he sank further into the man below him yet his fingers remained on the earring. He was tempted to yank it. To rip the thing out. Replace the vivid blue-green with red.

Yet, with breathy moans and tiny ministrations, the closed purple eyelids compelled him.

He removed his hand.

Orochimaru did look so good in blue.


End file.
